FRESH BODY FIT MIND

DAY SEVEN

MISTAKE #7 // NOT HAVING A PLAN

It’s great to be all fired-up and enthusiastic about incorporating exercise into your life. The benefits of working-out for your physical and mental health are immense and to be applauded. However, you’ve got to approach exercise with more of a game plan than just going ‘as hard as I can'.

When it comes to exercise it pays to plan. What do I mean? First off, consider your lifestyle change as a permanent fixture, one that will continue with you throughout your adult life and not just the lifespan of that low-fat yoghurt you bought last Tuesday.

You’re planning on ‘being around’ for a while, so create achievable goals that are short-term, mid-term and yes, you’ve guessed it, long-term. For short-term goals it might be something like, ‘I want to rock in that bikini on my summer hols’ or ‘I’m going to fit into that new dress for Jo’s party.’

Midterm goals might involve signing up and training for an event like a 10km race or doing a sponsored walk. Whereas long-term goals might be, ‘I’m going to go on a yoga retreat’ or ‘I’m going to run the Marathon’ or ‘I’m going to enter the Olympics, I’m going to win a Gold Medal oh and while I’m at it I’ll seta new World Record’ Okay, we can joke, but the idea here is to think short, think mid and think long.

Write down your plans in your favourite notebook, type them out, stick them to your forehead or have them permanently tattooed across the back of your hands. Keep them in sight (hard not to if you went for the last option), mark them off and add to them regularly. Remember: